1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for coupling information to a limited-display computing device.
2. Related Art
As the components required to build a computer system have reduced in size, new categories of computer systems have emerged. One of the new categories of computer systems is the “palmtop” computer system. A palmtop computer system is a computer that is small enough to be held in the hand of a user and can be “palm-sized.” Most palmtop computer systems are used to implement various Personal Information Management (PIM) applications such as an address book, a daily organizer and electronic notepads, to name a few.
The latest generation of palmtop computers are enhanced with the capability to be coupled to the Internet using wired or wireless technology. This gives their user's access to an extremely large amount of information. However, Internet web pages are typically developed for color display screens having a resolution of 800×600 or larger. This presents a problem for palmtop computer systems and other computer systems having limited display capabilities (e.g., small size displays and limited color displays).
Web pages use numerous small images in order to create a full-size display, some of which may or may not be displayed at any one time (e.g., images displayed on mouseover). Because of the large number of images and the complex relationship between images, it is difficult to know which images should be displayed on the limited-display computer system. For example, if all of the images that make up a web page that includes a complex header and text were to be transcoded vertically along with the text in a size suitable for display on a limited-display computing device, the resulting would include a long sequence of irrelevant images followed by text. The long sequence of irrelevant images (e.g., images displayed on mouseover) are burdensome to scroll through in order to get to the more relevant text. In addition, it would take an extensive amount of time to download such an extensive amount of images.
To overcome the aforementioned problems, various techniques have been developed for generating displays on computer systems having limited display capabilities. One technique, referred to as web scraping, requires that one or more person actually view an original web page on the Internet and determine which content is relevant and how the relevant content should be arranged. The scraped content is stored on a special web server that is accessible by the computing device having limited display capabilities. Though web scraping provides good images that include relevant information, only web pages that have been scraped are available. This significantly limits the user's Internet experience.
Another technique for enabling limited-display computing devices to handle web pages from the Internet involves the use of web clipping techniques. Web clipping techniques use a web clipping application that is installed on the limited-display computing system and that transmits a request to an Internet server for limited web content (a “web clipping”) from a specific web page. The server then generates and transmits the web clipping to the requesting limited-display computer system. Though web clipping techniques provide access to the Internet, only those Internet servers that provide web clippings that are compatible with the particular web clipping application can be accessed. Thus, the use of web clipping techniques also significantly limits the user's Internet experience.
Another technique for enabling limited-display computing systems to handle web pages from the Internet involves the use of a transcoding proxy server. The transcoding proxy server access web pages in response to requests from a limited-display computer system and transcodes the web pages in a format that the small display screen of the limited-display computer system can handle. Because of the difficulties associated with transcoding images, transcoding proxy servers use a “best guess” processing of the web pages that strips out all of the web content that the small display screen cannot handle (e.g., images, Java, JavaScript, tables, etc.). The transcoded web pages are then transmitted to the limited-display computer system. However, “best guess” processing techniques provide a very poor quality web page product because of the loss of images that are an integral part of many web pages. In addition, the display does not fully convey the look and feel of a full-size web page display.
What is needed is a way to obtain information from web pages that is in a format that can be displayed by a palmtop computing system and that accurately conveys the look and feel of the full-size web page.